


spooky action at a distance

by Aerielz



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, IWTB, Relationship Study, The X-Files Revival, Vignette, spoilers of everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-16 00:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5806258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerielz/pseuds/Aerielz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“We've got communication like that, unspoken. You know what I'm thinking.”</i>
</p><p>A collection of short unseen moments of their relationship through the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	spooky action at a distance

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes of some importance:
> 
> This was written a few ages ago, back when all we had about the revival was unrevealing clips and a lot of feelings, so there will undoubtedly be inconsistencies with what will actually happen today. But seeing as I actually kinda liked how it turned out, I thought oh, well, what the hell.
> 
> Also: unbetaed, but I gave it a once over. If there's anything too glaring leave a comment, I'll be more than happy to fix it.
> 
> And last, but not least, the rating is there because of some swearing, but it could've been Gen, really.

>   _i._

Scully takes off her jacket to inspect the damage on her clothes, as she takes a sit by his desk. The piece is dirty and smells vaguely like ozone, but her attention falls to the front, on the right side. A tear that started at the opening of the pocket had spread to take away everything that used to be under it. Most of the fabric on that side is now beyond any thought of repair. What's not in shreds or hanging by the sewing is askew, falling, or loose. As she lays it on her lap and tries to reassemble the jacket into something recognizable, Scully realizes that a few pieces of fabric are probably still on the hook that caused the wreckage.

One more piece of her wardrobe that surrenders to the occupational hazards.

"We've been through some shit." She concludes out loud.

Her voice cuts through the silence of the room, barely manages to break through the thick walls of his concentration.

They drown in silence for a few seconds, until he feels the need to look into her eyes for air.

"That's a rather precise description." He concedes, turning around to meet her fully.

The corner of her mouth lifts.

"What's on your mind?" He presses.

"Nothing, I just..." The smile shifts almost imperceptibly to a more pensive expression, brows furrowed in a look he sometimes think she should trademark. "I think I never thought the X-Files would be so much fun."

"Fun?" Mulder gets up from his sit and walks the three strides it takes to be in front of her. He supports himself against a shelve besides the chair she claimed as hers an age ago. It carries her presence even when she's not around, and Mulder never felt truly alone in the basement ever since. He supposes her perfume’s to blame; a faint _je ne sais quoi_ that follows him everywhere, clings to everything she touches, fills the small room with her skepticism, her pragmatism, and everything about her that's soft. “So you do take a liking in being chased around small towns by things that may or may not be a figment of my imagination…? Or maybe it's the fact that the same government that pays you is the one routinely trying to kill you. I know that's my favorite part of the job description."

"I don't know..." She continues, used to his cadence. “There’s nothing quite like field work, I guess.”

"And there's no field work like with me."

Her lips rise slowly, again, this time taking his along.

There's a tone to her smile, an I-know-something-you-don't tint that colors hers lips with something far redder than any lipstick. It’s rooted in trust, and the point of that entire conversation.

She wears foreshadow well. It fits her eyes and her patience; it pave ways. It's a rare gift. He feels guided, not manipulated. 

"Yeah, it's one way to put it. Hence-"

"We've been thorough some shit." He completes.

Not for the first time, not for the last, she watches him, while he watches back. They take each other in, and pretend not to notice how every micro-expression conveys all of that they don't say.

 

 

 

> _ii._

Sometimes, if the light is right, Scully's eyes are so blue and so bright the color reflected by her irises is pale. An almost white shade that grants her an outer-worldly air. And perhaps it has more so to do with how she looks at him -- the exact expression in her eyes that will cause him to worship or hate her love and devotion to almighty science. His mixed reactions two sides of a same wonder she awakened in him when she stepped into his office not 6 months before.

"-think about it, Scully." He goes on.

"What, Mulder, you're telling me that Johanna Frey made her sister go insane…?” From the corner of her mouth drips pure cynicism. The smile that follows is a signed declaration of fun and curiosity and disbelief.

Dana Scully does not hide, he knows that much. Nor he wants her to ever do it.

"Yes." He cracks a sunflower seed between his lips, noticing how her eyes track the movement of his fingers, of his lips.

“…And that she did it by creating virtual images of herself?”

Mulder nods in response, and Scully dips one of her hands into his seeds bag. She takes a handful out and inspects them carefully. He counts one, two, three, five in her palm.

"Anyway, I gotta get to the lab. The tox screen on Amanda's body is ready."

Scully pops one of the seeds open, taking the nut out of the shell and inspecting it before carefully placing it on her tongue. She chews slowly, so much that Mulder almost can't tell if her concentration is feigned or genuine.

"I don’t think I ever saw you eating them, Scully."

She shrugs.

"If that's the drug you’ve been using to get this much absurd ideas, then I want in."

"Never figured you for the junkie type."

She pockets the rest of the contents in her hand, and half turns to the door.

"Oh, the things you don't know..."

The glint of pure light goes away and all he sees before she leave is blue.

Mischievous, impressive, blue. 

 

 

 

> _iii._

Mulder wakes up before her, as usual. The morning light closes the door on the face of his latest nightmare, but not fast enough. He can still see the shadows of it’s paws from under the frame. The fight-or-flight instincts took residence in his overreactive unconscious years ago, and now come unannounced to conjure images of his latest fears, and to remind him of where they stand in life, now.

The feeling of her skin against his comes next, the stark contrast between her and the dreams of her absence working as a curtain call on the scenarios playing in his head.

Mulder exhales heavily, leaves a kiss behind her ear. His stubble tickles at her neck, and she half laughs before moaning a complaint. The sounds have him burying his face deeper into the curve of her shoulder.

"Mulder…?” Her voice is slow and muffled by the pillow, laced with sleep and annoyance. He can’t quite make up the letters that form his own name other the the r she drags long after it’s needed.

When he leaves their bed in the middle of the night her voice is strong and her worry clear, so he chooses to hold her tighter, instead.

Scully will only ever soften when his eyes do. Only ever loose her ready stance when he touches her arm to tell her they don’t need to make a run for it this time. The arms that enclose her at night aren’t there to make her feel safe, but to assure her that he feels so.

In a dance of lightning fast packing and feather light sleep, they’re adjusting.

It’s almost natural, by now — and how quickly they found themselves used to the rhythms of temporary residences, he thinks. Maybe because they were already so accustomed with each other’s tempo.

”Mmm…?” He answers, lazy as her.

Scully turns around, still nested inside his loose grip, to fit her head beneath his chin, a leg between his, and send an arm beneath his sweater, around his waist. She nudges him with her nose like he did, places a kiss on the hollow of his throat. Her lips track his heart frequency. He can almost feel her counting.

 _Something happened?_ Her breathing asks.

“’Sorry, Gobackt'sleep." He answers.

Her fingers keeps tracing short lines on his skin far after that.

He quickly falls back to sleep.

 

 

 

> _iv._

His eyes are closed but his attention jumps from sound to sound. It’s mostly soft clicks of opening and closing doors, the quiet shuffle of feet on linoleum next to him, the background-noise-like buzz of the fluorescent lights above his head.

Atmosphere lies in sound, and here the theme is tragedy on mute. A silent parade in the name of death. Time ticking away on the clock, relentless and ruthless.

A hand nudges at his shoulders. Mulder looks up to find a doctor, clad in a pristine white coat - oncology is deceiving in it’s cleanness.

“How long you’ve been here?” He asks.

“A couple of hours.“

They both know it's a lie, but it's a hospital. These walls have heard worse.

"Agent Mulder, right?"

He nods in response.

"She asked me to tell you to go home."

"And what did she tell you to do when I say I'm not going anywhere?"

The man places a hand on the doorknob Mulder has been guarding.

"To let you in so she can tell you herself."

He follows the doctor inside and finds her with her eyes closed, but her breathing gives her away.

The timing is such that it’s either absurdly early, or absurdly late. The only reasons that would keep Scully awake are the same reasons that have kept him so for the last few days.

“If you don’t get some sleep then I won’t get any either and neither of us should be sleep deprived right now.” It’s her only comment as he gets closer to her bed. Scully still has the look of sickness on her, but he knows it’s not there for long. Her steady remission won’t keep her here much more.

“Don’t worry, they’ll find a way to sedate us at some point.” He nods indicating the doctor at the foot of her bed. The man checks her chart, presses buttons on the instruments beside her, pretends to no listen. If Mulder had been at home letting them both sleep, the doctor would’ve gone by unseen. He and god knows who else.

“Mulder…”

His name by her voice of reason - always enough.

Mulder takes the chair that’s permanently on her bedside and drags it even nearer. He sits down on it, his arms cross on top of the mattress to pillow his head.

There’s a huff of laughter from Scully.

“Don’t you think these” she taps on his bicep, leaving her hand there “are a little uncomfortable?”

Mulder gives her fingers a squeeze, closing his eyes

“It’s a compromise, take it or leave it.”

“Suit yourself, then.” She says, but closes her eyes, too.

They hear the click of her door being closet, and after that it’s the soft sounds of easing breaths and the reassuring beeps of her heart monitor.

 

 

 

> _v._

They’re not the couple that fights over wet towels on the bed or who’s turn is it to take the dishes out of the washer.

They do get on each other’s nerves, not that rarely: Scully will always leave glasses and bottles at the porch whenever she’s out there, Mulder will come inside from a run and leave his footprints everywhere. If there’s rain he’ll strip his shirt at the entrance and leave it behind. If there’s work she’ll turn the coffee table into an office, and god forbid he tries to turn on the television.

They don’t argue, because arguing leads to fighting, and they’re both too old for that kind of bickering, she thinks. It aways ends up the same, anyway: her nails scratching at his scalp and and him burying himself deep inside of her. So they take a shortcut.

A raised eyebrow, sass, innuendo. Their mouths clashing, her back pressing against the nearest flat surface. Silly, sated, smiles they pretend are not there.

He picks up his shirt, cleans the floor. She takes the glasses inside, let’s him put The Doors on.

They find middle ground, and they don’t talk about it.

Even when she finds his paper clippings, they don’t argue. When the spare room gets a chair, then a table. When there’s a cork board, a shelf on the wall, then three, then cabinet files, then too much files to fit in the cabinets — and who uses file cabinets anymore?

At some point Mulder arrives home to find her sat on top of the table, having had cleaned enough space in the mess on top of it for it. It’s strange, for some reason. He can’t quite put his finger on why.

“Synthetic DNA?” She asks. The genetics papers he’s been reading are neatly organized beside her, while the rest of it his paperwork gathers in her hands. If it’s any indication of her readings, she’s been here for a while. “That’s… Admittedly impressive.”

He takes a seat in the chair in front of her, taking her ankles into his lap to run a hand over her calves.

“Welcome to the future. Remember when cellphones actually had buttons?” She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “If you ask me, what’s impressive is that the information and the technology are out there to the public. They privatized bioengineering, Scully.”

“I was referring to you paying attention on things originated on this planet, but hey, I guess we’re just getting old.”

He leans in to kiss her.

“Oh, I’ve been interested in things originated on this planet, alright.” He kisses her again.

“Cryptozoology doesn’t count, Mulder.”

“Human things originated on this planet.” And again. “Ever since you first opened the door to the X-Files.”

When their mouths meet again they linger, not quite kissing. They feel each other’s breath, caress each other’s lips. His hands rise to her knees, up to her thighs, to her hips, as he slides the chair closer to her. Scully reaches for his face, thumbs caressing his jaw. His tongue slides over her lips. She parts them to let him in.

There’s a bittersweetness to her kiss that shows in the pressure she puts when she traps his bottom lip between her teeth. Her nails scratch lightly at his nape, rise to his scalp, come down again to caress at his neck. She slows his pace with her own, forces him to pay attention to her every movement.

His fingers find the hem of her blouse, and when the pads of his fingers reach the underside of her breast he understands. He’s been living in the spare room for the last three months. Not once he saw her inside.

Mulder pretends not to notices. He stands up to press her down on the desk instead.

 

  

 

> _vi._

Everything is different, now, completely or just enough that it bothers him.

Her patience has gotten shorter over the years, even more now that they don’t share a bed, and he supposes that's on him. Her hair has gotten shorter, again, too, and her heels higher; but he decidedly has nothing to do with that. All of those tiny variations, whether he holds a finger of fault over them or not, speak of the gap left by the life they don’t share anymore. The years they've spent apart are all filtered by the memories of the ones they spend together. For her it’s a clear, clean cut break, but for him is an incomprehensible continuum, and through this lens the inches of space between their hands when they walk side by side distorts into an abyss.

In light of that distance, he has only some vague idea of how he managed to bring her down to the basement after so long. What he knows is that it is home, for both of them. In the way a house, even one that was theirs, has never been since they first left.

They arrive at the door to find a dirty name plaque still hanging on it. Scully runs a finger over it, uncovering the letters of her own name. The hinges complain when Mulder pushes at the wood.

The X-Files basement is mostly empty, if not for a heavy coat of dust over the remaining furniture, and an assertion of papers on the ground. She tries the light switch, finding it useless, and clicks her flashlight on to shine a light to the floor and corners. Piles of unmarked boxes stack against the opposite wall. Blank forms, posters and sketches from when they still occupied the room litter the floor, housing small insects and worn out memories. The walls are strangely white, and the desk is not there anymore.

The room is uncanny in it’s wideness.

Mulder enters unhesitantly to examines the shelves. He takes a look inside the boxes that gather on top of them, sending a puff of dust to the cold air, while Scully stays still where she is, feet stopping before she can pass the doorframe.

“Hey, some of my books are still here.” He says, his hands putting aside a file box to search for something behind it. "I wonder if...”

From the back of the shelf he pulls a ragged hardcover copy of Moby Dick.

Mulder flicks through the pages quickly, and stops just before Ahab lowers his boat one last time to confront his great white whale. From beneath the chapter mark, Christmastime of some year that's way behind them now stares back at him in the form of himself, less wrinkles and faith on his eyes. Scully is by his side on the photograph, under his arm. Her smile is the reason he kept this here.

“Yep.” He takes it out, taking a closer look; flips it, but there’s no date. Judging by his own expression and how Scully’s pressed flush against him, he guesses it’s from when they started getting closer. From when the smell of her hair from this close got him smiling and the fleeting touches lingered on his skin. It’s something he can related to, again. “I guess some things endure the test of time, right Scully?”

When she doesn’t answer, he turns to her.

Her eyes run over everything in the room, taking things in separately, never stopping. The beam in her hands finds a familiar image on the ground. Mulder's poster. The wandering of her eyes still.

"Scully?"

“…Yeah?”

Something weights on her voice, on her shoulders, shadows her eyes. He can't start to describe it. He can't start to understand it. There's no thread to pull. Mulder feels as if watching her scream from behind soundproof glass. The door frame she can't cross an invisible barrier that breaks him more than distance, bars, or death ever did. 

 

 

 

> _vii._

The vacuum of the silence left after an explosion is something he's rather familiar with, he would’ve recognized it anywhere.

When she went home on Friday and told him ‘I'll see you next week’, closed to questions or comments, he’d watched her walk away wondering what was it that made that phrase so different, this time.

Maybe it hadn’t been her words so much as the air that carried them. The space that remained, unbent by her gravity, leaving him nothing to orbit.

Monday - she comes back. And he understands, now, how much easier it is when he has someone to disagree with. The entirety of the FBI building had been enough for years, but in came Dana Scully, armed with physics and patience, and every competition was out the window. Occam’s razor in hand, she’d cut up his every argument with surgical precision, replacing his faulty logic with statistics and textbook knowledge that was far more useful than he ever gave her, or anyone, credit for. 

Mulder doesn't ask her if she's okay, she doesn't say she's fine, but it all feels like a lie, all the same.

Scully belongs to carefully well worded snark and polite irony, and the power she inspires with orders will command men and women higher up on the food chair like she’s larger than life. Her tiny frame hides the entirety of the universe within it’s confines, endless time and space, paradoxal quantum proprieties, expressed in the slope of a careful smile and in the gentle touch of her finger on his wounds.

She balances, force and grace, but give it a linchpin and she goes out in a colorful supernova.

Like everything else she does, the true devastation comes silently, like cosmic radiation, in a glance.

The shrapnels of that non-conversation will embed themselves deeply, and he won't even notice.

(Skinner does, days latter, when Mulder casually asks if he can get another table.)

 

 

 

> _viii._

He reads the piece of paper in his hands for what is probably the hundredth time, now, skimming through the printed letters without need, as he can recite it by heart, by now. He reads it again, unwilling to take it as good news, despite what’s written. Again, trying to understand what it was supposed to mean. Again, because he knows what.

He'd seen the new walls, smelled the new paint. Watched them slide Spender's name on his door.

He’s got their official reassignment letter.

Mulder and Scully, the brand new members of Counterterrorism. Until the shadows that commanded them decided to take more effective measures. Until they realized that the basement wasn't what kept him going, but the one who was there with him. Somewhere in his mind a clock started ticking, counting days and hours or, with luck, months, until their reassignment letters were sent separately.

He balls the page into his hand and there’s three knocks on the door before keys jingle on the other side and she lets herself in.

Scully finds him sat on the carpet, his back against the couch.

Mulder’s shoulders are slumped and he drowns himself in sunflowers seeds like a drunk would in beer. Not uncommon, as of lately.

She locks the door behind her, drops her copy of the keys on the table in front of them.

“Those are bound to give you a high blood pressure, you know.”  She points to the hand that searches for the last seed inside an otherwise empty plastic bag.

He find it and breaks the shell.

“They help me think.”

“You’ve been thinking for two days, Mulder.”

He toys with the black and white halves of the shell but doesn’t put the core into his mouth. Following his movements, she notices the small pile that forms beside him when he places it on top of it.

“Okay…” She sags on the couch behind him, one of her legs is close, close, to his shoulder. “I had only two semesters of psych in med school, but even I can tell this is not normal behavior.”

“Thank God it was only two semesters, God help me to have you calling out every single one of my mental pathologies.”

“Don’t give me this shit, what’s going on?” She says, her voice nothing but practiced bedside manners, despite the choice of words.

He stands up instead of answering, paces the length of room. Scully thinks of how much she must’ve learned from him, because he’s all tells. A hand on his waist, the other running through his hair, pressing on his eyes. Step, step, stop. Step, step, stop. A groan waiting to leave his throat as he clenches and unclenches his jaw. The cadences and rhythms of his nervous habits are honed down into her as much as they are into him. They pretend it’s better to watch and wait - he never accepted anything else, anyway - but more and more she’s found herself trying the opposite, through the half decade she’d known him. There’s something in his eyes that calls her to follow the more recent instincts. A restless look screaming _calm me down_.

“Mulder…” 

“They burned it down, Scully.”

"I know." There's a sigh in her voice. "And we've been reassigned. This is how it is, now."

"How it is? That basement was my life's-"

"-Your life's work, Mulder, I know. It was five years of mine too. It almost ended my life more than once, too."

"You're in the FBI, doc, no one told you it would be like that?"

Snark and passive-aggressiveness. Past that, logic and facts are on foreign grounds, much to her discomfort. It burns under her skin, but it's his last line of defense. The last thing that happens before he sags down to the couch and buries his nose on her neck.

Get out, he’s saying. Before I need more of you than you should give.

Scully gets up and walks to him, unfazed by his stubbornness, because by now she’d learn it, too.

"What is it, Mulder, what is it that's got you like this again?”

He turns his face away from her, but can't walk away.

"Mulder, c'mom." Her eyes don’t leave his face. Her hands reach for his. "Talk to me."

He shakes his head, denying his thoughts, her, or both - she doesn't know. He looks down, then, to their joined hands. His fingers finds her pulse, his thumb swipes once, twice, indefinitely, at her wrist bone.

"Forget it.” He swallows dryly. “Just..."

He let's go of her, thread his hair between fingers and closes his eyes. The fear she recognizes, but she doesn't know what scares him the most — not yet.

"They've burned it all down, but that's just the start." He mutters.

She's ready to answer him on a positive note, but the lie she wants to tell him isn't there.

The truth he’d spoken lingers on the living room heavily, like the smells of cigarettes.

 

 

 

> _ix._

Glass cracks between the concrete and their shoes while they explore the warehouse. Flickering dim lights glint on the myriad of broken pieces, reflecting tiny stars on the dark cement when she shines a light on the ground.

"I don't think she's here." Scully tells him when they pass yet another empty container. "That'd be pretty stupid, given the circumstances."

He nods his agreement, resting the gun back into its holster.

Mulder’s all high voltage. The adrenaline flooding his system feels like electricity, lighting up every part of him. The weight of the pistol in his hand, the reassurance of the loud click clack of her heels two feet behind him. It tastes like 1997 and her kiss - something he didn't know, then, and hasn't known for a while, now.

Mulder looks around, studying the place. Containers sparsely pepper the rectangular structure, a place so big the dozen or so enormous boxes look lost and scattered, and the warehouse barren. His eyes find the catwalks that web above their heads. From up there, the containers would look like Lego blocks on a kid’s bedroom.

"Whatever happened to criminals coming back to the crime site." He comments, eyes still trained on the metal above them.

"TV writers realized that's not real, maybe. You should know better, Mulder."

"Oh, well." His gaze trace the intricate design of the passages. The leverage of high ground would more than make up for the vulnerable positioning, he thinks. Not a bad place to hide. Also a good place for them to check. The lights hang beside it, and a childish part of him wonders if they would be strong enough to hold a persons weight. "You know me."

"I guess I’m the one who should know better, then."

He stops walking, something he can't quite grasp yet rising slowly from the shadowy corners of his intuitive mind.

"Electricity..." The word jumps out of his mouth, half muttered.

"I mean, honestly, Mulder.” She ignores the epiphany. “What are we- _you_ trying to accomplish here? Why are you even back, why did you even thought bringing me along was a good idea?"

He counts the light fixtures above their heads. It's an old, condemned building, but somehow some of them still work. The ones that don’t don’t appear to have bulbs of any kind in their sockets.

"Hey, Scully...?"

" _What_?" She answers from ahead, without looking back at him.

"The other buildings... The hospital and that house, the reports said the wires fused because of a massive electrical surge…?”

She stops under one of the working lights, and he sees her like he hasn't in years. Ages. She wears a frown, the same expression she reserves for illegible calligraphy in police reports, autopsies, and the not-so-rare moment of disbelief in what goes on inside his head. The strong lighting makes sharp corners out of her contrasts.

"Or maybe I should be asking myself why the hell do I still listen to you." She says, mostly to herself, now.

"Scully I think we should get going."

"I'm serious, Mulder, listen to-"

He strides to her, in a half run, saying "Me too. And you can tear me a new one as soon as we get out of here, but right now we-"

A flash of light comes from the ceiling, bright and blinding, and a small explosion has glass showering over her. The flashlight falls from her hands just as he laces her fingers in his, pulling her with him.

"Believe me, now?!”

Without the guide of her flashlight, they run toward the only other visible exit, on the opposite side of the warehouse. The path is lit by flickering lamps that burst as they pass. It wouldn’t afflict them more than shallow cuts, but given the state of the other buildings they found, Mulder doesn't want to be here when the electrical current that's causing every bulb to explode reaches critical state.

They see the open gates of the warehouse in front of them just as Scully starts to feel the hairs in her arms and on the back of her neck rise. There's just enough space between the doors that they might be able to squeeze by.

A low buzz fills the air, something she recognizes as high voltage running through wires that are not strong enough to hold the current. A clang of twisting iron comes from above. Air is not the best of conductors but the place is all metal. As is the door.

"Don't touch anything." She warns, when they reach the opening.

"Ladies first?" He asks, but goes ahead himself.

His passage is painfully slow. The flaps of his suit graze the metal, but he keeps his hands above his head, his eyes on her, and a stupid smile on his lips.

Mulder reaches the other side untouched, beckoning her along with the look on his face.

Behind her, metal twists again. The last of the bulbs explode, and where the space between the metal rails on the catwalks is close enough tiny blue arches of pure energy jump from one side to another.

Scully squeezes past the opening like he did. Her hands up, her steps careful. Unbuttoned, one of the sides of her suit snatch on a small hook of broken metal in the door.

"C'mom Scully, it'd be pretty good if you weren't there anymore by the time this thing fried everything insid-”

"Mulder."

"What?"

She can feel the electricity in the air, now, and the smell in the air brings out memories of her high school chemistry classes. Oxygen to ozone. There's enough current going through the structure that the tiny lightning bolts began breaking atom bonds, and now everything smells like rain.

"Shut up and pull me."

"What?!"

"I'm stuck!"

He gets a grip on the side of her clothes that he can reach, another hand finds hers, and he pulls her to himself. His tug rip a stitch or two on her clothing, but she doesn’t move.

"No kidding!" He pulls again, but whatever fabric makes up her suit, it resists his attempts in tearing it.

"Harder!"

He can't resist the smile and a turn of his head at that.

"I did miss the sound of those words."

Her eyes tell him that if they don't die, this time, she's killing him. He actually laughs. At the situation, at her unsaid words, at the arches of electrical current that find enough energy to breach more and more space, inside the warehouse. At this pace, the distance between the doors will be small enough to complete the circuit before she can tell him to fuck off.

"Okay… Scully...?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm gonna pull the hardest I can, but you'll have to take a literal leap of faith."

"What?!"

"Three... Two...-"

"Mulder?!"

"Trust me." He asks, the question hidden in affirmative form. "One!"

Scully throws her weight in his direction in time with his pull and leaves a good rip of fabric hanging from the door. It's impossible for her to keep her footing, and it turns out he can't either. Both of them stumble back and the combined forces send them to the ground.

She doesn't fall on his chest, and he hits his head hard on the ground, but it could be worst.

"Mulder...? You okay?"

He mutters a curse and grips at the back of his head, rising to a sitting position.

"I'm not dead."

"Enough for now." She says, rising to take a look on his head. There's no blood. It won’t cause nothing worst than a terrible headache.

He opens his eyes, turns to looks straight at her and laughs. Not a smile before. No warning. A wide, full blown laughter neither of them felt coming.

"What it is, now?"

He points at her.

"Your hair is all up."

And Scully smiles, despite herself. He reaches to the unruly hairs that ignore gravity to try and smooth them down, but they just come up again.

He laughs harder. She follows.

Inside the warehouse, the world is still ending.

Adrenaline has the strangest of effects.

"We better get out of here. There's no knowing if whatever happens inside has any effect outside." She stands up and extends him a hand.

Mulder takes it, stands, but doesn't let it go. He takes her in, messy hair and torn clothing.

She's beautiful when dressed in skepticism and duty - she's always been, and that’s how he’ll always remember her. But in the last decade he learned to appreciate that beauty disheveled, waking up beside him on lazy Sundays, as much as he did on the Mondays she clad herself in business and science.

He sees a clash of his both worlds in her, now. A synthesis, in her, of what he always had in him, and of what he learned from her to love. She taught him a life without monsters and shadows and she was sunlight whenever shadows threatened to swallow them both whole. He understands, now, just how much of that is also a part of him.

"This is why you listen to me." He says, looking back to the building that almost killed them. Not the first. It's a strange kind of hope to think it may not be the last. ”Maybe why you'd still be willing to."

Mulder gives her hand a squeeze. Scully pulls him along, as she walks. When she looks at him from above her shoulder, there’s a smile of her lips.

"Maybe I am.”

Because he taught her how to see in the dark. And there’s beauty in shadows, too.


End file.
